I know this will sound wacky, but bare with me here, in 1859 a man named Walter Murray Gibson joined the LDS church and talked church president Brigham Young into sending him out to see if some where in the Pacific would be good for settling the Mormons, Gibson was likely crazy but was very very good at talking himself up, based on his own charms he made himself Prime Minster of Hawaii and got Hawaii nearly into a war with Germany over Samoa, but back to the Mormons, in OTL Gibson went to Hawaii and tried to set himself up as God on Earth among the small number of native Mormons on the Island of Lānaʻi, when the Church learned he was buying up land in his name and not the Church's they excommunicated him, but what if rather than Hawaii Gibson went to New Guinea (something he talked about with Young) it was closer to Gibson's old grounds in Java (where the Dutch had put him in jail for trying to start a revolt there) and what if Gibson had managed to keep his need for personal power for long enough to use his great powers of persuasion to talk the Church into leaving America and alighting out for New Guinea?
The Mormons in New Guinea?
- Thread starter black angel
- Start date
Zioneer
Banned
Well, from reading his wiki page, it seems they were more ticked off at him basically committing simony than anything else, but the idea still stands.
1859 is too late though, by the time anything started up, it'd be the Civil War and there wouldn't be a need to leave, since the groups that were persecuting the Saints would be caught up in the Civil War.
In any case, I'll have to use Mr. Gibson in my independent Deseret TL. He seems very interesting.
1859 is too late though, by the time anything started up, it'd be the Civil War and there wouldn't be a need to leave, since the groups that were persecuting the Saints would be caught up in the Civil War.
In any case, I'll have to use Mr. Gibson in my independent Deseret TL. He seems very interesting.
maybe fear that the second the War ends the Feds will be on their back will get them to move while Washington is looking some where else, also Gibson was always very good at talking people into doing stuff (like the very poor King of Hawaii) I can see him saying there were mass conversions to Mormonism on the Island and lots of food and sun light...
The biggest issue, for this TL, I think would be getting immigrants to move to New Guinea. By 1859 the Dutch had already claimed the western part of the Island, but the British, French and Germans had made no moves on the rest of the Island (though all had adjacent claims).
New Guinea is not an inviting place to live- the local tribes people are not a unified group: the island is famous for its cultural and linguistic diversity. And I cannot see the Mormons wanting to move from newly settled Utah to an even less hospitable location.
Still, perhaps he could entice other settlers to move. Perhaps giving free land to former slaves after the US civil war? At the least, perhaps he could convert some of the local tribes to the LDS with a small American elite?
There was a small gold rush in eastern New Guinea in the 1920s, perhaps with earlier western contact, gold may have been discovered earlier?
New Guinea is not an inviting place to live- the local tribes people are not a unified group: the island is famous for its cultural and linguistic diversity. And I cannot see the Mormons wanting to move from newly settled Utah to an even less hospitable location.
Still, perhaps he could entice other settlers to move. Perhaps giving free land to former slaves after the US civil war? At the least, perhaps he could convert some of the local tribes to the LDS with a small American elite?
There was a small gold rush in eastern New Guinea in the 1920s, perhaps with earlier western contact, gold may have been discovered earlier?
I think it ends up like OTL's independent, non-government attempts to settle European colonists in the islands of the Bismarck Archipelago, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Rays_Expedition
the end times, the Mormons believe, will happen in Independence, Missouri, which is very far from Utah.